Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to computer graphics and more specifically to techniques for creating facial animation using a face mesh.
Automated generation of realistic face animation is one of the most difficult problems in the computer graphics field. For example, creating a realistic natural expression for the changes of a person laughing (or performing any other action) is very difficult. This is because most people are very sensitive to a minute change in a facial expression. When people look at computer-generated graphics where the minute changes are not animated precisely, the animation does not look realistic.
To create facial animation, changes in the facial expression may be manually entered to create the animation. For example, conditions need to be entered for the exact form, the exact timing of the motion of each part, and the change of the lightness and darkness on the skin that accompanies the change of form in the face. This requires skill and a lot of time. Even if the manually-entered changes create a realistic facial animation, the amount of time to input those changes may not make it worth it. Further, it is more difficult to create an animation when using only a single image of a user as input. Even when changes are manually entered, the resulting facial expression may not be realistic.